The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Russian: Коммунистическая партия Советского Союза, КПСС, Kommunisticheskaya partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza), abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union). The CPSU was the sole governing party of the Soviet Union until 1990, when the Congress of People's Deputies modified the article of the constitution which granted the CPSU a monopoly over the political system. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks (the majority faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party), a revolutionary group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 soon after a failed coup d

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Russian: Коммунистическая партия Советского Союза, КПСС, Kommunisticheskaya partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza), abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union). The CPSU was the sole governing party of the Soviet Union until 1990, when the Congress of People's Deputies modified the article of the constitution which granted the CPSU a monopoly over the political system. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks (the majority faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party), a revolutionary group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 soon after a failed coup d'état. The CPSU was a communist party organized on the basis of democratic centralism, a principle conceived by Lenin that entails democratic and open discussion of policy issues within the party followed by the requirement of total unity in upholding the agreed policies. The highest body within the CPSU was the party Congress, which convened every five years. When the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Orgburo (until 1952). The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary, Premier or head of state, or some of the three offices concurrently—but never all three at the same time. The party leader was the de facto chairman of the CPSU Politburo and chief executive of the USSR; the tension between the party and the state (Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union) for the shifting locus of power was never formally resolved, but in reality the party dominated, and a paramount leader always existed (first Lenin and thereafter the General Secretary). The CPSU, according to its party statute, adhered to Marxism–Leninism, an ideology based on the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx, and formalized under Joseph Stalin. The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized and a planned economy was implemented. Before central planning was adopted in 1929, Lenin had introduced a mixed economy, commonly referred to as the New Economic Policy, in the 1920s, which allowed to introduce certain capitalist elements in the Soviet economy. After Mikhail Gorbachev took power in 1985, at first trying to prop up the stagnant centrally planned economy, rapid steps were taken to transform the economic system in the direction of a market economy. Gorbachev and some of his allies envisioned the introduction of an economy similar to Lenin's New Economic Policy through a program of perestroika, or restructuring, but the results of their reforms contributed to the fall of the entire system of government. A number of causes contributed to CPSU's loss of control and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Some historians have written that Gorbachev's policy of glasnost (political openness) was the root cause, noting that it weakened the party's control over society. Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the economic stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. (en)

"[Because] the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, so corrupted in parts ... that an organization taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of the class."

1990.0

"Imperialism is capitalism at stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts as begun; in which divisions of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed."

"Either the dictatorship of the landowners and capitalists, or the dictatorship of the proletariat ... There is no middle course ... There is no middle course anywhere in the world, nor can there be."

"The loss by imperialism of its dominating role in world affairs and the utmost expansion of the sphere in which the laws of socialist foreign policy operate are a distinctive feature of the present stage of social development. The main direction of this development is toward even greater changes in the correlation of forces in the world arena in favour of socialism."

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Russian: Коммунистическая партия Советского Союза, КПСС, Kommunisticheskaya partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza), abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union). The CPSU was the sole governing party of the Soviet Union until 1990, when the Congress of People's Deputies modified the article of the constitution which granted the CPSU a monopoly over the political system. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks (the majority faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party), a revolutionary group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 soon after a failed coup d (en)